YEREVAN (RFE/RL)—Two Armenian lawmakers threatened to boycott the work of a “subcommittee” on the Karabakh conflict that was revived recently by the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly.
The subcommittee had first been set up following a PACE resolution on the conflict adopted in 2005. Its activities were effectively frozen in the following years.
Mevlut Cavusoglu, the PACE’s Turkish president, has sought to revive the panel, supported by Azerbaijan, over the past year. The PACE’s decision-making Bureau approved Cavusoglu’s initiative in January over strong objections voiced by Armenian members of the Strasbourg-based assembly.
The subcommittee is due to hold its first meeting in Strasbourg this week. Its two Armenian members, Davit Harutiunian and Armen Rustamian, demanded on Monday that a representative of Karabakh’s leadership also participate in the panel’s work.
“I personally believe that Armenia must not participate without Karabakh’s participation,” Rustamian told RFE/RL’s Armenian service from Strasbourg. “This is my view and I think the government shares that view.”
Rustamian, who is a member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation parliamentary bloc, also reiterated Yerevan’s arguments that the Karabakh peace process is spearhead by the Minsk Group and that Cavusoglu openly supports Azerbaijan.
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The accent of the lawmakers efforts should be put on
a) to be or not to be of the subcommittee, redundancy (whose money pay salary of this “chinovnik”?;
b) the conflict of interests or an a priori, unhidden demonstration of bias.
Instead, Armenian lawmakers play tactic games – weighing to participate or not to participate is a tragical mistake. Besides, their tactics collaborates that the subcommittee has a future (maybe they have some personal interest). Their standing demonstrates that Armenians are not constructive. Only negative credits.
AR should send a politican from NKR to the committe meetings